Tag: authentic leadership

Is visiting the Amazon and going to Machu Picchu on your bucket list? I highly recommend that you bump it up and go sooner than later. You need stamina for this kind of trip. And it’s too good to wait.

I had the great honor and blessing to spend 15 days in The Amazon jungle, living on site with the shaman and his family, alongside 7 other American friends as we seek out the wisdom and healing of the Ayahuasca medicine. Afterward we spent 6 days touring around Cuzco, the neighboring cities, and finally making it to Machu Picchu.

It was an incredible trip in so many ways. It has been a few weeks since I got back and I am still struggling for words to describe and capture the full extent of the journey. Partly because all the pieces are still coming together. Perhaps that is one of the many messages that I am receiving: Life and her lessons continue to show themselves to me, long after the event is over. My job is to look, listen, and take in.

In fact when it comes to the “I” word, most people avoid it like the plaque especially at work. We even can argue that “I” stands for INAPPROPRIATENESS.

But I disagree. Here’s why:

1. On the other side of conflict is INTIMACY. (Did you know that? When two people really empower the conflict, go into it, are committed enough to fight, to hear & speak the uncomfortable truths, to wrestle with each other and our own fears and demons, STAY (stay in the fight, don’t quit), you can’t help it but finding intimacy on the other side.)
2. The cliche (but oh so true) meaning of intimacy is “into me (you) see”. It simply means “two human spirits seeing each other”, really see = being understood and known by each other).
3. When two human spirits SEE each other, conflict dissolves, connection happens, alignment and unity lead, and new resolution emerges…that is leadership at its purest state (no coercion, no manipulation, but authentic, honest, and real).

So when we avoid conflict, we avoid intimacy; when we avoid intimacy, we avoid authentic leadership.